


Little Blue Dress

by ShfiftyFive



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Camping, F/M, Hypothermia, Post-Clarke Return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5369174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShfiftyFive/pseuds/ShfiftyFive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy gets hypothermia and Clarke has to keep him warm and inside their tent, two long days away from Camp Jaha. All of which is made more complicated by the 160-pounds of hallucinating muscled man Clarke ends up straddling while wearing an impractical blue silk dress. They'll deal with tomorrow if Clarke can just get Bellamy through tonight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Blue Dress

**Author's Note:**

> This whole idea came out of reading Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods." He talks about hypothermia and how hikers on the Appalachian Trail would be found laying naked outside their tents because hypothermia would make them believe they were burning up from the inside. Then I imagined Clarke using whatever means necessary to keep a hypothermia ridden Bellamy inside the tent. 
> 
> Written and unbeta'd by someone who has never actually had or seen someone with hypothermia. Also, not a medical professional.

Clarke unfurled the silky blue cloth, holding it up with both hands, one eyebrow cocked high. It was that patronizing look from their first day on Earth and Bellamy didn't like it anymore today than he did then. Well, not much more. The point was he wasn't going to answer the question in her eyes just because she had acrobatic eyebrows.

"What?" he asked harshly. But not too harshly considering his pack was being rummaged through by the one person he didn't want in there.

She waved the fabric back and forth, still kneeling over his pack near the entrance to their small tent.

"Look, I told you to stop going through my stuff," he huffed.

"And I told you that you needed dry clothes."

"And _I_ told you there weren't any in there because of the storm the night before we left camp," he said, gritting his teeth as best he could. Their chattering was undermining any authority his voice normally had. To be fair, being huddled near a small fire in his soaked boxer shorts was not helping the situation.

"Bellamy, you know the rule. You never leave camp without an extra set of dry clothes."

 _"Yeah, well my other set was indisposed,"_ He thought. _"And you were leaving."_

There was no way he was going to let Clarke go alone on her Jaha search. Sure, he thought he was calling her bluff, that she was really making another break for it. Now they were two days from camp and he was perfectly fine going all the way to the City of Light or whatever her plan was. If only he could warm up.

A shudder passed through him and his back ached with the deep-seated cold.

Clarke smirk sobered quickly.

"You really didn't bring anything?" she asked, an edge of desperation in her voice.

She had his pack, she knew the answer and Bellamy chose to save his energy for something more important. Like keeping his body curled up as tightly as possible until daylight or until he rolled himself into the small fire Clarke had built.

The latter of which he had threatened to do if she berated him one more time for going into the river fully clothed. Their map floating down a raging rapid superseded dry clothes. He maintained that.

"Well you brought...this," she said, holding up the silk dress as if he didn't know what she had dug up from his pack--mind you, against his explicit demand that she put the damn. Pack. Down. "As pretty as it is, it's not going to keep you warm."

She let the silk drape over her arm, looking at it the same way she would examine an infected wound, clinical and piercing. She glanced up at him, her teeth worrying her bottom lip.

He could see the gears turn, the latch springing open.

_"Almost there, Princess," he thought mirthlessly._

But she didn't say anything. She turned her back and took off her cotton shirt before pulling the blue silk over her head. It fell like water, rippling over her rib cage the way he had imagined it would. The dress fell over her hips and past her knees. She quickly shimmied out of her jeans and socks, shivering as her newly exposed skin felt the cool air of the tent. She folded them the same way he had watched her fold cotton bandages too many times to count.

Clarke crawled across the tent and set out the three makeshift compresses made from her jeans and socks. She held out her shirt.

"I don't mean to take away your dignity completely, but those are doing more harm than good," she gestured toward the wet boxers clinging to his hips.

Clarke turned her head with the professional air of a trained medic. Bellamy groaned internally, determined to match her leveled detachment. Minus the excruciating pain shooting up and down his aching back. His muscles tightened with every shudder. He had never felt such bone-chilling cold. Not even on the days when the heat lapsed in their Ark station.

Bellamy's hands shook as he removed the last bit of wet material from his body. He took Clarke's shirt from her outstretched hands and placed the fabric gingerly over the lower half of his abdomen.

When she turned back, Bellamy could see a flush high across Clarke's cheeks. As if she had the right to be the embarrassed one. He opened his mouth to say as much when his eyes traveled down and he noticed the full effect of the dress.

He was so fucked. There was no way to explain the completely bizarre fact that he took a dress from Mount Weather because the color reminded him of Clarke's fucking blue eyes. Yeah it was part of a reconnaissance mission weeks after they freed their people. Yeah they were instructed to take whatever they thought might be useful. But this dress was not useful. It was something else entirely. The truth was on his lips when Clarke leaned over him.

He hissed from the heat of the compress.

"Sorry," Clarke said as she turned her clinical eye to the skin of his tanned chest.

"No, it feels good. I was just surprised," he reached up and touched her fingers with his own icy ones. She pulled back and his hand dropped.

"Earth Skills Hypothermia Rule #2: Whatever you do, do not warm the extremities. This can cause shock and the patient may enter cardiac arrest," Clarke wouldn't meet Bellamy's eyes, staring at his shoulder instead. He dropped his hand and leaned his head back again.

Why did every movement between them have to be so fraught? Yeah she had disappeared for four months and deflected Bellamy's few attempts to talk about it. But now wasn't the time for a passive-aggressive feelings match. He felt too vulnerable lying here, shaking beneath her steady hands.

"What was rule #1, again?" He asked, breaking the tense silence.

"Earth Skills Hypothermia Rule #1: Just take off your damn clothes already Bellamy unless you want to freeze to death inside your own popsicle wrapper," she said, smirking.

"And how do you know what a popsicle is?" He followed.

Clarke rolled her eyes.

"Because, on the Ark, I had elite access to endless hours of children's entertainment which has given me so many advantages in life including identifying and using against you the concept of being a human popsicle," she said in her gruffest, deepest Bellamy voice.

He laughed, but the laugh turned into a deep cough that rattled his lung in his chest. Clarke bit the inside of her cheek, silently repeating the rest of the scant rules for hypothermia. 

"What I wouldn't give for a set of furs right now," she mumbled.

"You?" He started, "What about me? I'm the one with hypothermia and no pants."

He gestured to the Clarke's shirt awkwardly draped over his midsection.

"The furs would be for you, dummy. You really are the worst at being sick."

Because he was sick. That's all this was. Something she could handle. She could fix this.

Clarke removed the cooled sock compress from the indent just below his ribs. His abdominal muscles rippled at her touch and she replaced the socks with the warmed, wadded jeans. Her gaze raked up and down his torso, naming the individual muscles. A reminder to keep things medical.

Warming his torso was the most important thing. Keeping his heart pumping without any irregularities. Getting him through to morning.

The tent was silent except for Bellamy's still chattering teeth. His body shuddered beneath the compresses. Clarke didn't know if he was getting any better, but at least shuddering meant he hadn't gotten worse. His body was fighting, not shutting down. He didn't seem confused or have any other signs of severe hypothermia.

God help them if it came to that.

The thing she remembered most clearly from their Earth Skills class was the baffling final stages of hypothermia. The person was convinced they were overheating. They were overcome by the need to escape everything that was keeping them alive: their clothes, shelter, any source of warmth. Images of bodies splayed in the snow half out of their tents flashed behind her eyes. She shivered when she imagined curled black hair against the white snow.

Clarke continued to rotate out the compresses for the better part of an hour. She wiped her brow and checked the watch still hanging around her neck. Six hours until sunrise.

When she looked up again, Bellamy was staring at her, his narrowed eyes glassy, reflecting the diminishing flames.

"Did you ever write letters?" He asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?" Clarke asked. She shifted off her aching knee and stretched her wrists before returning to the compresses.

"Like, letters. You write a message to someone, address it to them...it's a simple concept."

"Messages. Yes. We sent them all the time on the Ark."

Clarke would talk about whatever Bellamy wanted to talk about if it meant he was still lucid. Well, almost anything.

The glassy look in his eye scared her. The heat faded so quickly from his skin that Clarke could barely remember which areas she had already attempted to warm.

He groaned, but this time it was from frustration.

"No. A letter, like a real letter. Paper. Folded, addressed," Bellamy huffed loudly, squeezing his eyes in concentration. Clarke was quiet, waiting to see if he would go on. She knew she should prompt him, to see if he would acknowledge her as...well Clarke, in this tent, dealing with his hypothermia. But she was a coward, too scared to see if he had begun hallucinating.

"I used to write them all the time," he said.

Clarke shook her head, his frustration contagious. There was no way. There wasn't any paper on the Ark. The only time she had touched paper before Earth was when she borrowed her great-grandfather's copy of Cosmos from the family lock box. She could still feel the way the page gave way beneath her charcoal pen. The dent, permanently marring the page in a way it never could on the metal walls of their apartment pod. Her mother had snatched the book away so quickly that Clark's pencil squeaked against the cold, metal desk.

"I wrote one every week. I'd give it to my mom, she would put it in her pocket, deliver it," he mumble, needing no prompting now that he had begun. "I never questioned where she got the paper. Never questioned how it got so soft."

Clarke held her breath. He seemed too lucid to be hallucinating, but his story didn't make any sense.

"Then one week, I ripped a hole in the paper," Bellamy sighed loudly. "I gave her the letter, didn't think much of it, but the next week there was a hole right in the middle of the page, the exact same spot."

His voice was thick.

"She never sent them. He never got them. Every week she would scrub my pathetic updates about Earth Skills and my cryptic O updates, as if he cared, and give the paper back to me."

Bellamy reached out a hand and tugged at the hem of Clarke's dress. He stared at the tiny, perfect stitching, formed by a machine meant for delicate materials. It was nothing like the haphazard seams sewn together with spliced fiber-optics or whatever other threads they could scrounge from the obsolete sections of the Ark.

"But I had gotten used to writing them. So I started writing the letters to whoever was pissing me off that week. Sometimes it was my father, or, whatever he was to me. Sometimes it was my mom. Usually it was Jaha," he chuckled quietly. "Sometimes I even pretended I was writing to Cicero about Jaha."

Bellamy's voice grew quieter and Clarke eyed his hand warily. She had been careful not to leave the freshly heated fabrics in one place for too long, concerned about leaving burns. Now she pressed harder with the compress willing the heat to flow deeper, to will himself out of this sudden bout of vulnerability. He winced and she released some of the pressure.

He fondled the dress hem, the fabric catching on his callused fingers. His gaze bored into it, searching for something. His point, maybe.

"I wrote you one," he said. He dragged his hand away from the hem and pulled his arm across his face, looking away from her. His words had begun to slur.  
The confession knocked the air from Clarke's chest, but she knew she had to say something to stop wherever this was going.

"When I was pissing you off?" She chuckled, but the sound rang false to her own ears. "Which time? When Jasper was speared? When I accused Murphy in front of all of camp?"

"No. After you left. I wrote you a letter. I wanted to send it with that dress. "I thought...I mean you would have thought I'd learned my lesson. Words don't bring people back," he said. "Besides, where would I have sent it, Clarke Princess Griffin, Middle of Bumfuck Nowhere Forest, TonDC."

Bellamy tried to lift himself onto his elbows, but his right arm gave out. His upper body was twisted toward her awkwardly, his eyes working hard to focus. He was no longer shuddering, his voice too quiet.

"And if I had given it to you, what would you have done with that dress anyway? It's the least practical thing on this stupid planet and it's been burning in the bottom of my pack for three and a half months as a reminder that we don't get to have beautiful things. All we get to do is survive."

His eyes were burning brightly, but his gaze was elsewhere, unfocused.

"Well it came in pretty handy tonight. I mean, survival wise. And it is very...pretty," she said cautiously.

Bellamy made a move to sit up again.

"What are you doing?" Clarke pressed him back against the tent floor, her open palm splayed across his cold, hard chest.

"I need some air. It's too hot," Bellamy moved to sit up again and Clarke panicked. It was warm in the tent, but not that warm. His heart beat was too slow and his breathing was shallow.

"You can't," she said.

"Like hell I can't," his words still slurred, but his determination clear as he shifted his weight forward as if to stand.

"Please, stay inside," Clarke begged.

"Will you stop. We're inside the walls and Miller's on duty. It's fine," he slurred, batting away the compresses on his chest.

Fuck. He was delusional. Clarke watched at Bellamy moved toward the tent entrance in a half crawl. She grappled at his arm, pulling him back. He was just unbalanced enough that he tipped over, pinning her right hand beneath his lower back.

Clarke whipped her left leg over Bellamy's hips, straddling him as best she could. Her arm was still pinned beneath them both. She was keenly aware that she was sitting on 160 pounds of muscle that wanted out of this tent.

Bellamy moved to roll away from her and she ground her hips down harder, the dress now hiked up around her waist.

He paused, staring at her flushed cheeks, her chest heaving with the effort of holding him down.

"You're burning up," he said, confused. His hand pressed against her forehead.

Clarke just stared at him. Her mind working quickly, hoping Bellamy could actually be this predictable even in his current state.

"Yeah. I'm sick," she said, quietly. She coughed.

Bellamy's hand dropped from her forehead, tracing the side of her face. She leaned into his touch, sure he was too far gone to remember any of this come morning. If morning ever came.

His hand continued along her chin, down her neck, and along her collar bone peeking out from beneath the blue silk.

"What do you need?" he asked.

It was a dangerous question.

"To stay here. Inside this tent," she said. Her voice shook.

"Okay. I'll go to the dropship and get your med kit. I'll be right back," he shifted beneath her.

"No!" She shouted. "I need you to stay here. Natural body heat. That's the only cure."

The lie was awkward and bizarre, but Bellamy nodded as if it made total sense. His arms came around her waist and pulled her body flush against his.

"Whatever you need, Princess."

The sincerity in his voice broke her.

"You must be really sick," he huffed into her hair. "You're so warm."

She wanted to smile at that, but she couldn't. His breathing had steadied, but his heart beat was still too slow. His skin was finally warming in the places where their exposed bodies pressed together. Clarke thought about Earth Skills Hypothermia Rule #5.

"Just go to sleep, Princess," Bellamy murmured.

Clarke listened to his breath slow to the even breath of sleep. Carefully, she pulled her father's watch from between their bodies.

Five hours til sunrise.

\----

Clarke was shocked when she blinked once and found the tent bright with daylight. She didn't remember sleeping, but she must have nodded off sometime after she last checked her watch at 4 am.

Bellamy's arms were still locked around her waist, pinning her tightly to his chest. Clarke listened carefully, panicking until he took a deep breath and nestled his head against her blonde hair.

Her body was sticky from sweat. Sometime in the night she had settled between Bellamy's strong thighs and she shook her head against following that train of thought. The small hairs around her face stuck to her cheeks.

Clarke twisted her head and was surprised when she met Bellamy's open gaze.

"Hi," she whispered, unsure how long he had been awake. She reached up and felt for the pulse point just below his jaw, counting ten slow seconds in her mind.

His heart rate was steady enough that she allowed her shoulders to relax. The weight of the night rolled off and she was hit was a shuddering sob.  
Bellamy started, gripping her tighter.

"Hey," he said, his right hand dragged up her spine and settled at the back of her neck with a strong, comforting grip. "It's okay."

She pulled away and smacked his chest.

"Don't you ever do that to me again," she said, a sob undermining her cold stare. Bellamy just watched her, nodding slowly.

Clarke untangled her legs from his and stood up on shaky feet. The dress was crumpled and wrinkled where they had pressed together in the night. Bellamy's clothes were still damp and would need a few hours hung near a fire outside. They had food, but he needed something higher in calories, fat or meat which was scarce this late in the fall. She sniffled loudly. Her mental checklist made her dizzy.

She was painfully aware of the naked Bellamy spread before her. He reached past her foot for her crumpled cotton t-shirt, laying it over his lower body with as much dignity as he could muster.

"Now can we talk?" He asked seriously.

"Sure. You're not leaving this tent until your clothes dry. I need to hunt, but--"

"That's not what I meant," he interrupted. Bellamy reached into his pack and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He held it out to her silently.

She unfolded the small scrap and read the short message.

_Please, come home._

_-Bell_

"That's it. That's the letter. I know I probably said a lot of crazy shit last night, but I didn't mean to scare you," he looked up. "Please don't go."

The sobs threatened to come back with a vengeance. Clarke stifled them and folded the paper again. She handed it back to Bellamy, but he stayed where he was, refusing to take it and watching her carefully. He had made his move, now it was her turn.

Her arm dropped awkwardly to her side.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, still sniffling.

Bellamy clenched his fist, the muscle in his cheek flexed. He believed her, but he didn't know what that meant exactly.

"But I need time," she finished, playing with the hem of the wrinkled dress.

Bellamy nodded slowly. His eyes ran up and down Clarke's tired form. The dress hugged her perfectly and he was felt stupidly grateful for something so beautiful and impractical.

That's all he wanted for her, beauty and some damn peace.

She slipped on her boots and paused before exiting the tent.

"Thanks for the dress," she murmured. The high flush returning to her cheeks. Bellamy felt a tightening in his chest.

"Anytime, Princess."


End file.
